Showing posts with label Bob Hand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Hand. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Letter to Bob Hand
Friday, September 11, 1970
On this date, Rock Springs Park Carousel fan, Dick Bowker, pens a letter to park owner Bob Hand thanking him for allowing himself and a few friends to tape-record their favorite march rolls on the park’s 153 Wurlitzer Band Organ. Mr. Hand passed away a month later in October from complications following a heart attack. Read Dick's letter at http://rockspringspark.blogspot.com/2011/06/dick-bowker-letter.html.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Cotton Candy or Candy Floss?
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| Debbie Haney spins cotton candy at Rock Springs Park 1970. |
Cotton Candy is the same thing as Candy Floss. Both names are adopted from the original “fairy floss” created by two Nashville, Tennessee candy makers and popularized at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.
Many have described the delicious aroma of the cotton candy being spun as they ascended the stairs next to the spring upon entering the park via the lower park entrance, which is why I included a package of Cotton Candy in a gift basket to be auctioned off at the “Take Me Home Country Roads 1st Annual Reunion” to be held at the Chester Municipal Building on July 7, 2012.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Memory Lane
While researching potential images and stories to share in the last chapter of Images of America: Rock Springs Park entitled, “The Magic Lives On,” I was told of a group of volunteers who were putting together a Memory Room in a classroom of the old Chester High School Building, now the City’s Municipal Building. The room, I discovered upon visiting in 2009, was originally set aside as the Mayor’s Office, but the mayor gave up his new “digs” and moved upstairs, opening up the classroom on the main floor to the Memory Lane Committee.
In my youth, the old high school was an intermediate/junior high, including grades four through nine. "Memory Lane" was my fifth grade language arts room. Specifically, I recall drawing a winter mural scene on the blackboard with a variety of colored chalk sticks. The teacher was enthusiastic about my artwork until it was discovered one of my dark green pieces of chalk was actually a fat crayon. I was worried upon entering the same room, thirty-four years later, that the blackboard would still be there, complete with my impossible-to-remove wax evergreens. Fortunately, though, the they have all been removed and, other than the view out the window, the classroom looks nothing like the one I remember. The intsitution green walls are now white.
View of the old high school beyond the Cyclone taken from the top of the Aeroplane Ride in Rock Springs Park circa 1947. The school is shown prior to an addition being added, which would house additional clasrooms and one day The Memory Lane Room. (Courtesy of Sherry Emery.)
When I took the photographs below inside the old high school in December 2009, I was using a low-grade disposable camera as I had forgotten my digital camera at home, thus most of the dark and grainy images were not used in the book. (I had hoped to take a photograph of the Memory Lane Volunteers, but we were not able to coordinate it. The women are listed in the book on page 127.) The Memory Room project was just getting started when these photographs were taken and would not officially open until June 21, 2010, coinciding with a slide show talk I gave in the cafeteria, sponsored by the Chester Kiwanis Club to kick off the publication of the book.
In the hallway outside my old Fifth Grade Language Arts class is the Chester Hall of Fame and Local History Displays. Inductee Plaques are hung above the display cases which were originally embedded with student lockers.
Inside the Memory Lane Room of the Chester City Building, two Hans Hacker paintings are on display. These were donated by Robert M. Hand, oldest son of owner Robert L. Hand. Bob willed the paintings to the city as per his mother Virginia’s wishes. The Log House (left) was once the family home of the Hands in Rock Springs Park. The second Hacker Painting is of the Carousel. Hacker, a celebrated decal and ceramic designer who fled Nazi Germany in 1939, painted hundreds of scenes of his new home, East Liverpool, OH, and the surrounding area.
Bob Hand, oldest son of Rock Springs Park owner Robert L. Hand is pictured in the hallway of the Chester’s City Building along with my mother, Margaret Cline, in the Chester High School Class Portraits of 1956.
My Grandfather, Clifford Otto Comm, a charter member of Chester's Kiwanis Club, was posthumously inducted into the Chester Hall of Fame on July 1, 2011. I was able to attend the ceremony, but have yet to see his plaque displayed along with the other inductees. I look forward to seeing it and Memory Lane again, soon!
In my youth, the old high school was an intermediate/junior high, including grades four through nine. "Memory Lane" was my fifth grade language arts room. Specifically, I recall drawing a winter mural scene on the blackboard with a variety of colored chalk sticks. The teacher was enthusiastic about my artwork until it was discovered one of my dark green pieces of chalk was actually a fat crayon. I was worried upon entering the same room, thirty-four years later, that the blackboard would still be there, complete with my impossible-to-remove wax evergreens. Fortunately, though, the they have all been removed and, other than the view out the window, the classroom looks nothing like the one I remember. The intsitution green walls are now white.
View of the old high school beyond the Cyclone taken from the top of the Aeroplane Ride in Rock Springs Park circa 1947. The school is shown prior to an addition being added, which would house additional clasrooms and one day The Memory Lane Room. (Courtesy of Sherry Emery.)
When I took the photographs below inside the old high school in December 2009, I was using a low-grade disposable camera as I had forgotten my digital camera at home, thus most of the dark and grainy images were not used in the book. (I had hoped to take a photograph of the Memory Lane Volunteers, but we were not able to coordinate it. The women are listed in the book on page 127.) The Memory Room project was just getting started when these photographs were taken and would not officially open until June 21, 2010, coinciding with a slide show talk I gave in the cafeteria, sponsored by the Chester Kiwanis Club to kick off the publication of the book.
In the hallway outside my old Fifth Grade Language Arts class is the Chester Hall of Fame and Local History Displays. Inductee Plaques are hung above the display cases which were originally embedded with student lockers.
Inside the Memory Lane Room of the Chester City Building, two Hans Hacker paintings are on display. These were donated by Robert M. Hand, oldest son of owner Robert L. Hand. Bob willed the paintings to the city as per his mother Virginia’s wishes. The Log House (left) was once the family home of the Hands in Rock Springs Park. The second Hacker Painting is of the Carousel. Hacker, a celebrated decal and ceramic designer who fled Nazi Germany in 1939, painted hundreds of scenes of his new home, East Liverpool, OH, and the surrounding area.
Bob Hand, oldest son of Rock Springs Park owner Robert L. Hand is pictured in the hallway of the Chester’s City Building along with my mother, Margaret Cline, in the Chester High School Class Portraits of 1956.
My Grandfather, Clifford Otto Comm, a charter member of Chester's Kiwanis Club, was posthumously inducted into the Chester Hall of Fame on July 1, 2011. I was able to attend the ceremony, but have yet to see his plaque displayed along with the other inductees. I look forward to seeing it and Memory Lane again, soon!
Friday, June 10, 2011
First Post-War Tri-State Community Picnic
The First Post-War Tri-State Community Picnic was held on Wednesday, August 6, 1947. The celebration was sponsored by The East Liverpool Junior Chamber of Commerce. The Program included a treasure hunt and penny scramble for the kids, Tom Brenneman’s “Breakfast in Hollywood” show, and a quiz program featuring East Liverpool trivia.
Orchestra leader Bobby Byrne, best remembered for his romantic but forceful trombone style, presented a one-hour “top flight” musical revue, according to the souvenir program. Byrne long expressed an interest in flying and served as both a bandleader and a pilot during the war. He had only been discharged in 1945 and had been freelancing around the New York City area until forming a new orchestra in 1946.
Music and contests were the theme of the day at the First Post-War Tri-State Community Picnic with the top prize being a 1947 Four-Door Ford Sedan. The drawing was held at the entrance to Virginia Gardens. Even the souvenir program itself was numbered for a contest drawing. To end the evening, a queen was crowned at midnight. Valley Motor Transit had buses running between the park and the terminal at East Liverpool all day with the last bus departing after the dance at 1:00 AM. Advanced dance tickets were $2.50 and the cost at the door was an additional 25 cents.
Rock Springs Park had been closed during the war with the Hand Family only returning to the log house in the winter of 1946. Owner Bob Hand had just been released from the army, and reopened the park for the first time since the start of WWII that summer.
Click below and enjoy a great sampling of Bobby Byrne’s Orchestra.
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